December 16th, 1945 is an historic date in the musical life of Dublin. On that day, singers from many of the city's Catholic church choirs came together to perform Handel's Messiah in the Capitol Theatre, writes Tony Williams.
The conductor was Dr Vincent O'Brien, first musical director of Radio Éireann, master of the Palestrina Choir in Dublin's Pro-Cathedral, and former singing coach of the great tenor John McCormack.
The audience included the President, Sean T. O'Kelly, the Taoiseach, Eamon de Valera, and the celebrated diva Margaret Burke-Sheridan, another of Dr O'Brien's pupils. According to newspaper accounts, she could be seen joining in the Hallelujah Chorus from her box. The success of this concert led to the formation of a permanent choir of over 300 voices which took the name Our Lady's Choral Society. The choir, still a pillar of Dublin's musical life, celebrates 60 years of music making this Wednesday night in the National Concert Hall.
Whether singing in Dublin, Manchester, Paris or Rome OLCS has received considerable acclaim over the years. In July 1956 the choir gave two performances of Elgar's Dream of Gerontius at the Berlin Festival with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. "In all my long experience, I do not recall a reception comparable to that which we received from the Berlin audience," wrote Oliver O'Brien, who had succeeded his father Vincent as music director. "The clapping continued for at least a quarter of an hour."
Though "somewhat flat in tone at the beginning", a review in the Tagesspiegel remarked, the choir recovered to present "a virtuoso display of expressive singing, its diction and attack beyond praise".
According to an Irish newspaper report of the Berlin trip, however, there was in the programme notes "one of those errors which Irish people abroad regularly have to get used to". The concerts were described as "a contribution which England brings to the Berlin Festival", and the choir's choice of Gerontius "showed the high regard for Elgar's work in Britain". The audience was clearly nonplussed by Amhrán na bhFiann, which the choir sang at the beginning, but "stood up en masse as soon as the martial air of the music left them in no doubt".
Perhaps the most distinguished guest conductor of Our Lady's Choral Society was Sir John Barbirolli. He was associated with the choir from 1952 until his death in 1970, and considered it to have "a particularly fine sound. . .
comparable with the best". In April 1953 he brought over his Manchester-based Hallé Orchestra for a national tour of Messiah. A special train was laid on to take the musicians to Cork, Limerick, Waterford and back to Dublin for a final performance in the Theatre Royal. Relations between all concerned grew so warm that Barbirolli and the Hallé were startled, but delighted, to hear strains of Verdi's Va, pensiero from choir members at the quayside as their ferry departed for Holyhead.
Barbirolli led the concerts for the choir's 25th anniversary celebrations in 1970. The Irish Times's music critic Charles Acton found the performances of the Dream of Gerontius and Verdi's Requiem profoundly satisfying - as far as he could judge. In his view the National Stadium was a wholly inadequate venue for staging such choral works, and he reckoned that Barbirolli was the only one among thousands who could hear everything that was played and sung.
By the time OLCS celebrated its golden jubilee in 1995, the National Concert Hall was available for its anniversary concerts. And what concerts they were - performances of Elgar's two mighty oratorios The Apostles and The Kingdom on consecutive nights, just as the composer had intended but rarely, if ever, experienced. The architect of this achievement was Proinnsías Ó Duinn, music director since 1979. His conducting of chorus and orchestra revealed details of the music which seasoned Elgarians present had never heard in other performances.
The concerts commemorating the silver and golden jubilees show that the music of Elgar and Verdi has been of central importance to OLCS. And the choir is probably best known for its annual pre-Christmas performances of Handel's Messiah. So it is fitting that in this week's concert, with contralto soloist Deirdre Cooling-Nolan, the National Sinfonia and conductor Proinnsías Ó Duinn, these three composers feature in the programme. Moreover the works in question, and that of the fourth composer, Vaughan Williams, are ones of celebration or praise.
The joyful music of Handel's Zadok the Priest will be very familiar to concert-goers. Vaughan Williams's beautiful Serenade to Music was written to mark the golden jubilee of Sir Henry Wood's conducting career in 1938. With gorgeous melody, luscious harmonies and magical orchestration, Vaughan Williams created the perfect musical match for Shakespeare's lovely words from the nocturnal scene in Portia's garden in The Merchant of Venice. Another work which explicitly celebrates music is Elgar's The Music Makers, a 1912 setting of an ode by Arthur
O' Shaughnessy. It represents Elgar's artistic credo and constitutes a self-portrait in sound. The beauty of Verdi's Te Deum is more austere, whether quietly devotional or rising abruptly to majestic power. His Laudi alla vergine Maria, composed in 1888 for unaccompanied four-part female chorus, is a reflection on the virtues of the Virgin Mary from Dante's Paradiso.
As early as 1947 an article about Our Lady's Choral Society concluded with the words: "In a short time it has accomplished much; in the years ahead it will accomplish more. Such is the aspiration of its members." Fifty-eight years later, under the guidance of just three music directors - Vincent O'Brien, Oliver O'Brien and Proinnsías O Duinn - it can be asserted with confidence that that aspiration has been fulfilled.